With just three days left of campaigning to go, the election battle between the two major parties has become a maul, with Labour and National plunging the depths of negative campaigning as they scrap for every last vote.
The attacks come as many people hold-off casting early votes, with early voting well down on the last election’s tally. Whether this is due to fewer people fearing being unable to vote because of Covid-19, indecision, or a decline in turnout because of negative campaigning is unclear, but as of October 9, just 733,000 ballots had been cast, well down on the 1.28 million votes cast at a similar point in the last election.
National leader Christopher Luxon dubbed Chris Hipkins the “prime misinformer” after Hipkins clarified Labour’s free dental care for people under 30 policy only covered “basic” dental care.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER THE LIVE BLOG
OPINION
In the pickle of polls in the closing week of the election campaign only one thing is really clear: the various attempts to play Whac-A-Mole with Winston Peters have failed miserably.
The spaghetti of results in three polls out this week will leave the parties on tenterhooks.
Volatility and different polls telling different stories in the closing days of an election campaign can indicate voters are changing their minds – and that can be a roller coaster ride.
That will have the National Party the most worried about whether its vote is starting to crumble at a critical stage.
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Reports of family violence have increased over 50 per cent since 2017 and the Government launched a 25-year strategy to eliminate it, yet discussion about one of the country’s biggest issues has been “completely missing” this election campaign, laments the head of the Women’s Refuge.
The National Party launched its justice manifesto this week, repeating one of its most commonly-cited statistics, that violent crime has increased 33 per cent since 2017.
That statistic comes from police reports of “acts intended to cause injury” and is adjusted for population (it’s about a 46 per cent increase based on raw numbers).
The Herald has reported extensively on the myriad of issues around using such statistics in political situations, most importantly that they are reports, and police have greatly enhanced their reporting methods in recent years.
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National has crashed according to the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll. National is on 34.6 per cent, down 4.6 percentage points.
Labour is still trailing at 27.5 per cent, up 1 point on the last poll. The Green Party is at 14.9 per cent, up 0.7 points. Act hasn't moved from 8.8 per cent. New Zealand First is at 6.8 per cent, up 1.6 points and well above the 5 per cent threshold to enter Parliament.
Te Pāti Māori is up half a point to 2.7 per cent. The Opportunities Party is at 2.2 per cent while NZ Loyal has registered at 1.4 per cent.
Without NZ First, the left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori on these numbers could reach 57 seats. It's more than what National and Act would bring in on these numbers, which is 54. The right bloc would need nine seats this poll gives to NZ First.
The Newshub-Reid Research poll found National's Christopher Luxon was leading in the preferred Prime Minister ratings. Luxon had fallen from 24 to 23.6 per cent in today's poll, but still higher than Labour's Chris Hipkins' 22.2 per cent. Hipkins had had a 3.1-point bump since the last poll.
NZ First's Winston Peters (5 per cent) had edged ahead of Act's David Seymour (4 per cent). The Green Party's Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick was on 3.7 per cent - ahead of her co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson, on 2.9 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively.
The poll was conducted between October 5-10 and had a margin of error of 3.1 per cent.
The latest 1News Verian poll shows NZ First holding the balance of power even though the left bloc has the momentum while the right bloc is holding steady.
National is up one point from last week to 37 percent while Act has dropped one point to 9 percent.
New Zealand First is steady on 6 percent - but it still holds the balance of power; Act and National would only have 58 seats between them, three short of a parliamentary majority.
Labour is up two points to 28 per cent, while the Greens are also up one point to 14 per cent.
Te Pāti Māori is steady on 2 per cent.
In the preferred PM race, Labour leader Chris Hipkins is steady on 25 per cent, the same as National leader Christopher Luxon, who is down one point.
NZ First leader Winston Peters on 5 per cent while Act leader David Seymour on 4 per cent.
Of the 1001 eligible voters polled, 9 per cent didn't know or refused to answer, the lowest percentage this year.The polling period was from Saturday, October 7 to Tuesday, October 10.
The margin of error is 3.1 per cent.
Severe gales are forecast around the country for election day, with heavy showers also tipped to soak voters in the main centres.
MetService meteorologist Lewis Ferris said, “People should get out and vote early because generally, the weather around the country is not looking great.”
“You don’t want to be lining up and being battered by the wind. The rain is firstly going to fall on the West Coast, and it will move up the North Island in the afternoon,” he said.
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New Zealand First’s manifesto includes promises for some of the biggest cuts to Government spending forecasts seen in recent times in New Zealand, slashing about 7.3 per cent of public spending in its first year from the current track, equating to a $10.4 billion cut.
But the party is also promising massive increases to Government spending, which one economist has estimated to be worth about $20b over the four-year forecast period.
This is according to NZ First’s party manifesto, which was released just before TVNZ’s minor parties leaders’ debate last week.
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On today's episode of On the Campaign, catch up on what you missed from the Herald's PM Job Interview, while Simon Wilson explains why National and Act are going head-to-head over Tamaki and Epsom.
Two polls are dropping tonight to show who is in the running to lead the next government.
The latest 1News Verian poll and Newshub Reid Research poll will both be released just after 6pm.
A week ago, the 1News Verian poll had National at 36 per cent, Labour at 26 per cent, the Greens at 13 per cent, Act at 10 per cent, NZ First at 6 per cent and Te Pāti Māori at 2.2 per cent.
These results were mostly unchanged from the previous week, though Act had fallen two percentage points from 12 per cent, while Te Pāti Māori had edged up slightly from 1.9 per cent.
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Regarding Luxon's belief in dinosaurs, Luxon said he had no idea why a rumour had sprung up that he did not believe in dinosaurs.
He reiterated that he did believe in dinosaurs.
"I appreciate Labour might like some distractions, but the bottom line is we have serious issues in this country."
He said he had never vetoed an Air New Zealand safety video over his views on dinosaurs.
STORY CONTINUES
Campaigning in Nelson and Blenheim, Luxon turned the screws on Labour for running a “campaign of disinformation”.
The attack was in retaliation for Labour dubbing National’s tax policy a “scam” after it was revealed only about 3000 households would get the full $250 a fortnight National had been promising in ads and media appearances in which it usually, though not always, added the qualifier: “up to”.
National returned the favour, digging up ad after ad promising “free dental” or “free dental care” without the qualifier “basic”.
Finance spokesman Grant Robertson said Labour had always been clear about what was in and out under the policy.
“We’ve been very clear that it’s free basic dental care,” Robertson said.
Lieutenants Robertson and National’s Nicola Willis were rolled out as both turned up the volume on, of all things, fiscal policy.
Between 5am and 6am on Tuesday, both released fiscal plans for their opposite number.
Labour went first, mocking up a National fiscal plan in the party’s blue and purple colours. It recosted policies like National’s foreign buyers’ tax, taking account for the fact economists believe the policy will bring in far less revenue than National anticipated.
It also said National would need to cut into frontline service delivery at the likes of the Department of Conservation if it wants to follow through on its promise to cut backroom expenditure by 6.5 per cent on average.
According to Labour, National would need to cut $3b a year from public services to make those promises add up.
Robertson also pointed out the party’s cuts to landlords’ tax bills in the form of reinstating interest deductability correlated with the amount of money National planned to save by recalculating the way annual increases to benefits were costed.
Hipkins said this was a spending cut for beneficiaries to pay for tax cuts for landlords.
“I think that shows the National Party have their priorities all wrong. In a cost of living crisis, they want to take money away from our poorest families and have thousands more children living in poverty so that they can give tax breaks to landlords,” Hipkins said.
Willis responded in kind, releasing a fiscal plan for Labour.
Much like Labour’s plan for National, National’s plan for Labour was Labour-red and emblazoned with the words “ruin it for you”, a play on Labour’s campaign slogan “in it for you”.
Willis claimed Labour’s promises were far more expensive than it had costed them to be, blowing out the plan by $7b.
The biggest contributor to this was Willis’ disbelief that Labour would stick to its spending plans, having consistently spent more than it had signalled - Labour defends this by saying that Covid-19, the inflation spike, and Cyclone Gabrielle have forced it to spend more to keep up.
Willis added $2.4b to Labour’s plan to bring it up to what she thought was a more realistic number.
She then re-costed the Labour Party dental policy, saying it would be significantly more expensive than Labour had said - although Robertson shot back saying Willis had “costed something else”, which was effectively not the “basic” dental care promised by the policy.
The difference between Labour’s idea of Labour’s policy and National’s idea of Labour’s ended with slurs being lobbed back and forth across the Cook Strait.
Labour also faced heat for a new ad claiming National would erode entitlements to superannuation, although neglecting to mention that National’s policy of lifting the superannuation age would only kick in in 2044.
National is clearly worried this policy is putting off older voters, with Luxon at pains to assure a retirement home audience in Christchurch last week that they would not be affected by the policy, because they would not be here in 2044. Luxon neglected to go for the more benign truth that all would be well over the retirement age when the eligibility hikes begin.
Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
